Duluth Trading Co. store opens in South Portland as part of aggressive expansion

The first Duluth Trading Co. store in Maine is now open in South Portland, the latest in an aggressive bricks-and-mortar expansion by the Wisconsin-based apparel and accessories retailer. The 55 Maine Mall Road store, with 10,289 square feet of selling space, is the 13th of 15 the company opened this year and will bring its nationwide total to 45.

The first Duluth Trading Co. store in Maine is open in South Portland, the latest in an aggressive bricks-and-mortar expansion by the Wisconsin-based apparel and accessories retailer.The 55 Maine Mall Road store, with 10,289 square feet of selling space, is the 13th of 15 the company opened this year and will bring its nationwide total to 45.The store, which is at the corner of Maine Mall Road and Darling Avenue, close to the Portland International Jetport, will employ 34 to 40 people full time.It is positioned to compete with L.L.Bean, Cabela’s, Orvis, Eddie Bauer and Kittery Trading Post.The closest Duluth Trading store to Maine is in Burlington, Mass., but the company has a large concentration of Maine customers. “So, in part, our customer demand brought us to the South Portland area,” a spokesperson said this morning.Earlier this year, the company said in a news release this year’s expansion gives it coast-to-coast presence “from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.” The Portland, Ore., store opened in May. Other openings, more than one in some states, were in Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Ohio, New Jersey and Alaska.The company began in Duluth, Minn., as a catalogue-based retailer in 1989. Now based in Mount Horeb, Wisc., it has increased sales spurred by an aggressive schedule of store openings — five since Sept. 13.Duluth Trading (NASDAQ: DLTH) had sales of $471 million last year, up from $376 million in 2016.In the South Portland, the grand opening on Nov. 8 will include a 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting, lumberjack demonstrations and other events.